


Fairfield

by andthatisterrible



Series: Gods and Monsters [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Demons, F/F, Urban Fantasy, Warlocks, a prequel, because the main part of it is a flashback, but still set after the first fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:15:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24594400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthatisterrible/pseuds/andthatisterrible
Summary: Set in the immediate aftermath of Wǣrloga, on a quiet day in when Root asks Shaw for a favor and Shaw finds herself thinking back over the events that took place in the town of Fairfield over a year before.
Relationships: Root/Sameen Shaw, Root/Sameen Shaw/The Machine, Root/The Machine
Series: Gods and Monsters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1766113
Comments: 22
Kudos: 82





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot, but I split it into prologue/main story/epilogue to break it up a little. It takes place directly after the first fic, with the story of Fairfield told in the second chapter as a flashback.
> 
> I went back and forth a bunch on if and how I should include graphic descriptions of some of the stuff that happened in Fairfield since I'd established it to be a pretty horrible event in the first fic. In the end I opted to imply a lot of the bad shit without going into specific graphic details. The M rating is for that and for the extremely brief sex scene near the beginning.

Shaw let Root sleep in. The morning sunlight coming through the curtain-less windows stretched across the bed and bathed Root in its warm glow and, as Shaw watched, she stretched and rolled further into the patch of light without ever waking up. Sleeping Root looked relaxed and peaceful in a way that awake Root never managed to. The covers had pulled down to her waist leaving her pale, tattooed back bare. There were still red lines up on the back of her shoulders that Shaw's fingernails had left there the night before, and the fresh pink scar down her back from the fight with the warlock.

Shaw slipped out of bed (the bed they'd shared for two nights now, something she could tell Root was as uneasy about as she was) and got dressed quietly. She turned back around when she heard the sheets rustle, thinking Root might have woken up, but Root had only rolled over further into the sun patch as if seeking out the warmth. She was on her back now, but for once it wasn't her breasts that drew Shaw's eyes, but the scar that ran from her collarbone down to almost between her breasts.

Shaw hadn't seen that particular scar until a little over a year after she'd seen Root get the injury that had caused it, but she'd thought about what it might look like a few times during that year. And about whether or not it had killed Root.

She'd thought about it clinically--mapping out the possibilities of injuries caused by the pinwheeling piece of rebar that had hit Root seconds before she'd lost sight of her. Had it hit her neck or her shoulder? What had the angle actually been? How fast had it been moving? It had been a futile exercise and she'd given it up quickly enough. Either Root had been alive or she hadn't. All the guesswork in the world wouldn't have changed the outcome of that.

She examined the scar now from a safe distance and free from the possibility of Root returning her scrutiny. It had been a nasty wound, she guessed, but it could have been much worse. If she'd been able to treat it properly it probably wouldn't have left nearly as bad a scar, but she doubted that the bureau had done much more than patch it up enough to prevent Root from dying.

She hoped Denton Weeks' nose healed crooked. It wasn't enough of a revenge for what he'd done to both of them--and to an entire town--but it was something for now. An IOU that she planned to collect on one day.

Root's hair was shiny in the sunlight, stretched across the pillows around her in a tangled cloud. Shaw knew exactly how that hair felt between her fingers when she tugged on it to urge Root on. She thought about climbing back in bed, pinning Root down with the weight of her own body, and tangling her fingers in her shiny hair while she woke her up with just her lips and tongue against her neck. Her eyes strayed back to the scar though and she thought about how maybe Root slept so heavily now because she was making up for a lot of lost sleep over the last year.

She turned away and went to investigate the contents of the fridge. If she wasn't going to get sex this morning then she was at least going to get food.

* * *

The sun had moved on across the floor, leaving the bed in the dimmer morning light by the time Shaw pushed Root back across the sheets, the plates from their breakfast still sitting on the table behind them. Root tasted like maple syrup and she was unusually reserved beneath Shaw, still sleepy and lazy as she rocked her hips into the steady movements of Shaw's fingers between her legs. She was awake enough to flip them over and slide down Shaw's body to return the favor after though and Shaw thought maybe there was something to be said for having someone stay the night if this was how the morning after went.

After, they both lay next to each other, sweaty and content while the sun rose higher outside the windows.

"We should probably get up now," Shaw said finally. "Got an artifact to track down."

"We do," Root agreed. She sounded distracted and she looked at the ceiling instead of at Shaw.

"What?" Shaw asked. "You have plans?"

"No. No plans, but…" She trailed off and Shaw saw the slightest wrinkle between her brows.

Shaw blamed the lingering warm glow of her orgasm for how she impulsively rolled back over on top of Root and pinned her again, swallowing her startled gasp with a kiss just rough enough to make it clear this wasn't any cute post-sex cuddling bullshit.

"What?" she asked again as she moved down to scrape her teeth along Root's neck.

"I need a favor."

That surprised Shaw enough that she hesitated for a split second. She recovered quickly enough. "Thought I just did you one."

"Not that sort of favor."

She sounded serious so Shaw left off her sophisticated interrogation technique to prop herself up and look at her. If she hadn't known better she would have said Root looked nervous.

"What sort then?"

Root looked away to the side, up at the windows above the bed. "My tattoo got damaged back when we fought the warlock."

"I remember. You said it'd need to get fixed at some point." She didn't see how this had anything to do with her.

"She thinks we should do it sooner rather than later. There's a lot of people upset with both of us right now, and while I haven't noticed any interruption in our connection, well, better safe than sorry."

"Is it healed enough for that?" Shaw would have recommended another week of healing even at the accelerated rate Root healed at now.

"We think so. It's going to be...unpleasant no matter what and I think we'd both feel better if it was taken care of sooner rather than later."

Shaw sat up, sensing that the sexy part of the morning was probably over. "So what's the favor?"

"I need somewhere safe to stay while She redoes the tattoo, somewhere I can lie down."

"I can clear out for a few hours." That was hardly a big favor since she'd had a couple errands she'd planned on running today anyway.

"She said I should ask you to stay, but obviously you don't have to." The second half of the sentence was rushed.

"Oh." Shaw frowned, perplexed. "Why? You need a doctor for this? I can give you some painkillers or numb the area or something."

"No, it's better not to for this. It's more that…. It will probably only take two hours this time in Her estimation, but She has to focus so She can't really talk to me and last time it was seventeen hours and She was there but with Her not responding it was…." Root's ramble broke off and she shrugged helplessly. "Maybe She thinks I could use some entertainment."

Shaw remembered how Root had described getting her tattoo. Every inch of it had seared to the bone she'd said.

"I'm not the most entertaining person."

Silence stretched through the room. Root continued to stare at the ceiling and Shaw watched her stare. Root didn't generally ask for help, not for important things, not even when she was bleeding to death.

"I need to get some stuff done around the apartment anyway," Shaw said finally. "Can't promise I'll be entertaining though."

Root nodded and breathed out a little puff of air. "I won't be a bother."

Shaw wasn't sure why that of all things annoyed her, but it did. "You need anything to get ready?" she asked, pushing aside that urge she sometimes got around Root now, the urge to hit someone very hard--not Root, but some unknown person and for some reason she couldn't clearly explain.

"No, I'm just going to take a shower first."

Shaw watched her head to the bathroom and tried to understand why she felt more useless than she had since the hours before the fight with the warlock.

* * *

Shaw knew from both good and bad circumstances that Root had a very high pain tolerance--almost as high as Shaw's maybe--so she could guess from Root's expression exactly how much pain she was in. Root's was on her stomach on the bed, topless and with her hair pulled up to leave her back fully uncovered. Her fingers were clenched hard in the sheets and her lips were pressed tightly together on her pale face. She hadn't made a single noise, but Shaw didn't think that could last.

Shaw had started out by doing the dishes and tidying the room. There wasn't much of anything to tidy though between her sparse furnishings, neatly organized belongings, and Root's small pile of possessions. The whole process took her maybe fifteen minutes. She tried to clean her gun, but her eyes kept betraying her and slipping back to the bed.

Twenty minutes in and she finally rolled her eyes at herself and went over to the bed. "Shift down a little."

"What?" Root sounded surprised and her voice was strained.

"Shift down. I'm sitting here."

She sat at the top of the bed with her back against the wall, head just below the window ledge, and the top of Root's head next to her thigh, so close that her hair brushed Shaw's skin right below where her boy shorts ended. She still had no idea what else she could do so she took the opportunity to spy on Root's back. Her whole tattoo was rippling with color like it was alive beneath her skin and Shaw could see the places where the design had crept back across the scar, the lines stretching across the damaged skin to try and meet again.

"You need anything?" she asked.

"No." Root's fingers bit into the bed below her.

Shaw sighed as she realized what the obvious thing to do now was. Somehow Root was always the key factor in her doing things she never thought she would. What a pain in the ass she was.

She pried one of Root's hands out of its death-grip on the bed and fit her own hand against it, fingers still extended so Root could squeeze down on her whole hand and maybe not destroy her nice sheets. This wasn't meant to be intimate--Shaw didn't even want to contemplate that--it was meant to be...comforting perhaps, if comfort was a thing she could actually provide.

"I may crush your hand," Root warned and her voice sounded less strained now, a hint of warmth creeping into it.

Shaw huffed out an almost-laugh. "I can take it. Just concentrate on your...tattoo thing."

"Thank you."

"Yeah, whatever. You owe me later." Root sounding all serious and genuine when she said thank you was weird and Shaw would rather she had made a joke or used one of her lame lines.

"I do," Root agreed.

A memory swam to the surface from the back of Shaw's mind, maybe already stirred up from her thoughts earlier that morning. A different bed in a different place, but still just the two of them and almost the same words. She watched the lines crawl slowly across Root's back as her mind sank into the past. A little over a year ago, at the end of summer, in a town called Fairfield.


	2. The Fairfield Incident

"You owe me one next time," Shaw said as she watched Root climb out of the folding cot they'd both briefly crammed into. "Actually, two." Root still owed her for stitching up her side after that last mission and Shaw was happy to collect her payment in mind-blowing sex.

"I do," Root said. She stretched with her arms up over her head, her whole body stretched taut for a moment in a show that Shaw suspected was for her and which she definitely had no hesitation in enjoying.

The dim green light of the exit sign above the door cast the whole room in an eerie glow. The teachers' lounge at the local elementary school had been converted into a temporary guest room for her since there wasn't a hotel in a suburb like Fairfield and Shaw had opted out of staying in anyone's house. Reese had taken a classroom down the hall and the handful of other ISA agents were scattered across the rest of the building. Normally kids would have been coming back to school this week, but the starting date had been pushed back a week as a precaution and that had made the school an ideal place for the town council to bunk the government agents sent there for their protection.

The only problem with the arrangement was that the air conditioning wasn't turned on yet so the school was sweltering in the early fall heat wave. The sheets beneath Shaw were soaked with more sweat than just their vigorous activities had produced and she was considering just stripping them off altogether to sleep.

"Where are you crashing?" she asked as she watched Root pulling her pants back on.

"Oh, I found a place nearby. A local family is on vacation and left their very nice house vacant for the week." She paused, pants only halfway up her legs. "There's a guest room there if you wanted somewhere nicer to sleep. And air-conditioning."

"Tempting, but I'll pass." She sat up on the bed and used the sheets to wipe some of the sweat off of herself. "You think there's any chance the warlock will actually show up here?" She was still puzzled that Root was here at all. Despite the fact Fairfield had seemed like the logical next location for the warlock to head, the bureau had been very sure it was bound for a different town and only sent a handful of agents here as a precaution. It wasn't like Root to show up for a pointless mission and if the warlock wasn't coming here then this was very pointless. And if it was….

"I think…." Root trailed off as she tugged her shirt over her head. "I'm not sure what I think, honestly. There's something odd about all of this."

"Is that why you're here?"

"Partly." She sat on one of the low school chairs to pull her boots on. "If there really is a warlock then you're going to need some backup."

Shaw's eyebrows shot up in surprise. That definitely wasn't like Root. Or maybe it was in some way she was only just starting to glimpse. "You came here to help me?"

Root smiled at her. "You're a valuable contact in the bureau and I'd hate to have to seduce another agent from scratch."

Shaw rolled her eyes. "Your seduction game _is_ pretty weak."

"It worked on you." Root stood up. "Also, like you said, I owe you."

"That wasn't what I meant."

Root shrugged. "You should have been more specific then." She smiled, that obnoxious condescending smile that made Shaw want to dunk her head in a sink.

"You're starting to sound like the fae."

"Yes, well, I do admire some of their tactics, though I can't say I enjoy interacting with them." She picked her leather jacket up off the back of the chair (and Shaw wondered again _why_ she had the damn thing with her in this weather) and slung it over her shoulder. "Hopefully tomorrow will be boring and you can go back home and the next time we get together it will involve air-conditioning and a much nicer bed."

"Yeah, hopefully."

Root didn't say goodbye, but she did wink. Sort of.

Shaw did the best she could salvaging the sheets and flopped back on the lumpy bed. It would be a good idea to get some rest, just in case.

It was already getting hotter the next morning when she woke up, and she peeled back the covers with a disgusted sigh. It was going to be a long, gross day and the only thing to do was suffer through it with the knowledge that it would soon be over.

She got dressed, armed herself with a liberal amount of weapons and infused artifacts, and set off to find Reese.

"You're really wearing that in the weather?" she asked him when she found him hunched awkwardly in one of the small chairs in the cafeteria, wrapped in a long black coat.

"I thought maybe a large man covered in weapons wandering through suburbia might raise some concerns," he said, pulling back his coat enough to show off the impressive arsenal he had hidden under it.

"If you die from heat stroke you won't get to use any of your fancy toys."

"Good thing I'll have a doctor with me."

"I'm a lousy doctor, but I'll wear something nice to your funeral." She looked around the empty cafeteria. "Where're the other two teams?"

"They said something about finding a nice air-conditioned place to hole up for the day." Reese got up. "Which means we're going to be the only ones out there so we should probably get moving."

The air outside was so thick with humidity that Shaw almost turned around and went back into the school. She wondered again if they'd been sent here as some sort of punishment. Reese had been grumbling a little louder than usual at the bureau and she'd maybe been sarcastic at that slimey jackass Denton Weeks at a briefing a few weeks ago. The other two teams here weren't exactly the cream of the crop so this whole thing felt a lot like someone had wanted them to have a bad few days.

"Where do we start?" Shaw asked as she looked out over the town. The pavement was baking under the sun, and cicadas were screaming in the trees. Most folks weren't outside, but sprinklers were going full blast on the lawns. The only other people out were a group of kids on the swings by the school.

"I don't even know what we're looking for," Reese admitted.

That was a big part of the problem: there was no known motive or method to a warlock's attacks. They just seemed to show up out of nowhere and kill whoever happened to be in the area. The best they could hope for was that they'd get lucky and be nearby if the warlock made an appearance.

"Let's start with main street and then sweep the perimeter?"

Reese grunted in acquiescence and they started on their way towards the center of town. The town was the most stereotypical suburb Shaw had ever seen, like someone had taken the essence of suburbia and crafted it into a town that could have been out of a movie. There were endless rows of houses that were all basically the same, though the plastic siding on them varied in color and the garage was sometimes on the opposite side. Even the cars in the driveways looked roughly the same, as did the mailboxes and the tidy lawns. It was almost surreal.

"It's a wonder people don't go crazy living in a place like this," Shaw said.

"Who says they don't?"

Main street was mostly empty, though Shaw suspected that had more to do with the heat than any concern about the warlock. The row of quaint store-fronts with glass windows lined the blocks, each shop equipped with a bell that jingled as the door opened. They paused at the coffee shop on the corner to get some breakfast and a cold drink and ignored the suspicious stares of the locals in the place. Reese tried to smile at them, but that only made things worse.

Shaw munched on the blandest bagel she'd ever had as they continued to wander. A block or two away, they found where all the people were.

"They're having a _street fair_?" Shaw hissed, looking out over the little booths and tents packed into the road. "Today?" People were crammed into the street, kids running around underfoot.

"The annual end of summer market," Reese said as he squinted at the white banner hanging over the street. "And there's an antique car show tonight."

"Fuck this." Shaw ignored the smell of delicious street fair food and turned away. "Let's go do a circuit of the town perimeter."

Fairfield had an actual field surrounding it on three sides which separated it from the nearby towns, though there were signs of new housing developments being constructed in the free space. Shaw looked out across the dry grass and wondered again who would actually voluntarily live there. Manhattan might smell like a rancid trash heap during the summer but she'd take that any day over...this.

"You looking for something?" Reese asked as they rounded the southern end of the town.

Shaw stopped craning her neck to peer at the town. "No one in particular."

"So it's a person you're not looking for then." Reese's mouth twitched into a smirk. "What's Root doing out here?"

Shaw decided the best course of action was to ignore the jab because it was too hot to murder him. "She said something odd was going on. Didn't seem to know what, but with her, who knows."

"She doesn't usually show up for nothing, so maybe there is something to be worried about after all."

"Or maybe she's just messing with me and already left."

"Got all the messing with taken care of last night then?"

Shaw elbowed him in the ribs. "At least it wasn't a totally wasted trip for me. What'd you get out of it?"

A crackle over her ear piece drove all thought of murdering Reese from her mind. They both halted, trying to listen, but there was only static mixed in with the faint sound of a voice they couldn't fully hear breaking up. A horrible cracking noise over the comm made Shaw wince and then slowly look up as she realized the same noise had echoed from the town. There, back near the center of town a line of thick, black smoke was rising into the sky. Shaw felt a shiver run down her spine.

"Do you think it's…." Reese didn't finish the question.

"I think we need to go find out."

The smell of smoke grew stronger as they entered the town, and Shaw thought that there was more than just one fire maybe. They were hurrying as much as they could, but the entire world seemed to be transforming around them faster than should have been possible. The smoke blotted out the sky and made Shaw's eyes sting and white flakes of ash rained from above like ghastly snowflakes.

"This didn't happen in the other towns," Reese said, his voice muffled from pulling his shirt up over his face.

"That's because the other towns were the warm up."

Shaw spun towards the new voice to find Root emerging from the driveway of a nearby house. Her face was streaked with sweat and ash and her expression was grim.

"Here." She held out her hand and dropped two necklaces into Shaw's palm. "They'll help with the smoke."

"I'm surprised you brought one for me," Reese said as he slipped his on.

"Only because I had an extra in case one of these broke."

The necklace was a pendant with a red stone set in a metal backing--definitely an infused artifact--and as soon as Shaw put it on and thought about not having to breath in smoke, her lungs cleared.

"We need to hurry," she said. "That thing needs to get killed fast."

Root didn't argue and fell into step with them. "You need to be careful, Shaw. This isn't anything like the unnaturals you've faced before. It can kill you without batting an eye."

"How do we kill it?"

"No idea."

They started to see people as they drew closer, terrified and running in the opposite direction. Cars shot past them down the road at dangerous speeds. Shaw thought about stopping someone and getting some information, but they all looked too terrified to be useful.

Glowing embers joined the ash raining down as they reached the first of the fires. Or where the first fires had been. The smoldering ruins of houses lined both sides of the street, small flames still dancing in the wreckage.

"How'd they burn so fast?" Shaw asked in disbelief.

"The warlock's patron is a demon with extremely powerful fire magic of some sort," Root said. "Hope you brought your sunblock, Shaw."

Shaw didn't have a single infused artifact on her that was of any use against fire, so she opted to put on her shock wave glove, the artifact she defaulted to the most. The wave of force the glove released was like hitting someone extremely hard and hitting someone was usually a good first line of attack in her experience. It felt ludicrously inadequate at the moment.

"Fuck," Shaw breathed out as they turned the corner onto main street. The idyllic shop fronts were in ruins: shattered glass from the windows carpeted the street, and flames lapped at ruined window displays.

"It's too quiet," Reese said.

The sounds of the fires roaring and the unstable buildings creaking were everywhere, but Shaw got what he meant.

"No survivors," Root agreed. "The warlock was thorough." She paused to look at the remains of the coffee store. "It blasted this shop in deliberately from the look of it. Look at how the wood is bent back here like a battering ram hit it. It was making sure it killed everyone."

"Why though?" Reese asked. "What's the point?"

Root shrugged. "Does there have to be a point? Maybe it just likes killing." She sounded blasé, but Shaw could see her face was paler than usual under the streaks of ash. Reese looked genuinely rattled as well by the level of destruction they were surrounded with.

A horrible thought slipped into Shaw's mind. "The street fair."

They could tell long before they got there what had happened. The entire block was an inferno of flames still burning. There were no signs left of the brightly colored tents and only a few scraps of the banner remained dangling from a pole. The enticing smells of food from earlier had been replaced with much more unpleasant smells.

"You think anyone got out?" Shaw asked. It was hard to see through all the fire and smoke, but there were definitely bodies in there. A lot of them.

"I doubt it." Root turned away to look behind them. "It's over there."

Shaw followed where she was pointing and saw the red glow over the town was significantly brighter in one area.

"That's by the school," she said. "Good thing they cancelled it this week." Not that she had any illusions that the kids were any safer at home, but she didn't think she wanted to walk into a scene like that today. The fair was bad enough.

None of them said anything while they hurried towards the school through the empty streets. Shaw could see how Reese's jaw was clenched underneath the ash on his face, and Root stayed uncharacteristically silent and gazed off into the distance, expression blank. None of them looked too closely at any of the burnt bodies that seemed to be scattered across the sidewalks and lawns like discarded toys.

Even with the artifact necklace protecting her, Shaw's eyes still stung from the smoke and the air was uncomfortably hot in her lungs. The humidity of the day seemed to have vanished and been overtaken by air so hot and dry that she half expected flames to spontaneously burst into life everywhere.

"None of the warlocks in the briefings managed anything like this," Reese said as they walked past the burnt out remains of a car that had been abandoned in the middle of the street. The smell of burning rubber was inescapable.

They were nearly to the school when Shaw's earpiece crackled again.

"Come in, come in. Anyone left out there?" She recognized the voice as one of the ISA handlers.

"Agents Shaw and Reese here," she responded. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Root grimace in distaste. "We could use some backup here."

"Roger that. We've got the army headed in to assist. Arriving in twenty minutes. What's the situation on the ground?"

Shaw looked out over the burning town. "The whole town is going up in flames, way faster than anything I've seen. We're closing in on the warlock, but we could use some intel on how to take it out."

"We'll update you with any information we can find on that, but right now you'll have to make do with what you got from the briefing." There was a thumping as if the mic was being covered on the other end and then the handler came back. "Your orders are to stop it at all costs. Protecting civilians is a lesser priority."

Shaw frowned. "You have an authorization code for that order?"

"I5A slash 4581. Is there a problem agent Shaw?"

"No problem." She tapped off the comm and turned to see Reese also frowning. They weren't the sort to get sent in to protect civilians, but in these circumstances with no one else there to do it….

"We've got our orders," she said, watching his face. Would this finally be the order he disobeyed?

Reese nodded. "If we see anyone who needs help…."

"We'll deal with that when it happens." She looked over at Root, who was watching them without expression. "You sure you want to stick around for this? If we really try to take this thing down there's a good chance we end up getting toasted."

"We're wasting time," Root pointed out. Shaw took that for her answer.

The warlock wasn't at the school anymore when they got there, but the red glow hadn't moved too far past it. The school itself was in ruins--the roof looked almost like a giant fist had punched down on it several times, right where the classrooms were. Maybe the warlock hadn't known school had been cancelled. Nearby the metal frame of the swing set still glowed with heat. There were no kids there anymore and thankfully no bodies, though Shaw wasn't sure what the chances were they'd gotten to safety. What did safety even mean right now?

The obvious path of destruction leading away from the area veered back into the residential area. The smoke was getting heavier and while Shaw wasn't one up get claustrophobic she could admit there was something about the way the whole world was blotted out around them that made her uneasy. It was like they were cut off completely from anything resembling the real world and had entered a different dimension altogether.

"Over there."

She turned at Reese's words and half-raised her gun before seeing the situation.

"Shit."

Two kids were hiding behind a nearby car, coughing from the smoke. She thought one of them might have been one of the kids from the swings earlier.

"A lot of kids are going to die if we don't stop that thing," Root said quietly from next to her.

"Reese, can you get them out of here?" Shaw asked. They had their orders, but….

"You can't take that thing down by yourself."

"Root's got my back."

Reese looked torn but nodded and hurried towards the car. As the smoke thickened even more, Shaw lost sight of him.

"As much as I dislike the big lug, we're going to need all the help we can get."

"We'll manage. All we need to do is slow it down until the army gets here." And hope the army could actually take it down. She glanced at Root. "You're technically a civilian, you know. You don't need to be here." She enjoyed the brief disgusted look on Root's face at being called a civilian.

Root opened her mouth to answer, but right then the building across the street from them crumbled and collapsed on itself, flames flaring out all around and black smoke billowing. Shaw raised her gun, though she wouldn't have been able to explain why that was her first reaction. Later, thinking back on the moment, she thought she'd almost felt _something_ from the direction of the ruined building. Something menacing and dangerous like a thick slimy darkness creeping up her back.

The front wall of the building collapsed and behind it stood a figure unlike anything she'd seen before. She didn't even have the words to fully explain what it looked like. It was like someone had punched a hole in the world in roughly the shape of a human figure. Her first instinct would have been to say it was a dark figure, but even without the flames that wreathed it there was something to the emptiness of its form that was almost light, vacant. If the darkness was full of monsters then the brightness was full of nothing and this was a creature of flame and void.

She aimed her gun.

"Shaw, I don't think--"

Two shots fired at the warlock, right at where a human's heart would be. Time slowed to a crawl and this time Shaw _knew_ she could feel the thing's attention on her like a heavy weight. The bullets slowed as they approached the warlock and Shaw thought she heard a low chuckle like a rumble that stirred the debris around them. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

Her decision to dodge to the side and tackle Root to the ground with her wasn't one she consciously made. Above them the bullets she'd shot at the warlock embedded themselves in the wall right behind where she'd been standing.

She rolled up into a crouch, barely stopping to register that Root was also okay. It took her a second to understand that the reason they hadn't been killed by a follow-up attack was that the warlock's attention had turned elsewhere. It was hard to tell where the warlock was looking, but she thought it was looking up at where the sky was somewhere above all the smoke.

"We need to run," Root hissed at her. She was even more covered in ash now from getting knocked down, and there was bleeding cut on her forehead.

"Wait." Shaw recognized the sound she could hear even above the roar of the flames. "That's a jet." She climbed to her feet. "Let's go."

The warlock didn't turn towards them as they scrambled away down the street to regroup. Shaw pulled up short at the end of the block and turned back to watch as something hurtled down through the smoke at the warlock. The warlock raised its arm and whatever it was froze in mid air, engulfed in the smoky air, and then reversed its course and flew back up through the smoke.

"Fuck," Shaw said quietly and a loud explosion from the sky echoed her words seconds later.

"So much for the army," Root said. "We need to get out of here, Shaw. That thing is worse than I'd imagined. We don't have a chance."

"There's a lot more army than that on the way." Shaw put her gun away since at this point it was just a hazard. "I need to keep its attention until they get here. Some of the town is still standing and it needs to stay that way until everyone who can get out does."

"This isn't the time for heroics."

"This is my job."

"And letting John evacuate the children earlier? I don't think that was in your orders."

"Sometimes you have to do both." She eyed Root's accessories: a silver bracelet with a green stone, a couple rings, two necklaces, and some bulges in her pockets that suggested she had more artifacts hidden away. "What sort of firepower are you packing with all that?"

"Nothing that could help us, I don't--" Root's face twisted with fear. "Look out!"

This time it was Root who slammed into her and knocked both of them to the ground. The mailbox that had been next to where they'd been standing exploded in a shower of sparks and twisted pieces of metal. Shaw felt something clip her ear and blood run down the side of her face. She raised her head enough that she could see the warlock just across the street, headed in their direction. Her gun had already proven more of a hazard than a help, so that left her with her infused artifacts. The blast from her shock wave glove hit the teetering remains of the house next to the warlock and sent them crashing down. She saw the warlock turn to look even as the burning beams collapsed on it.

"Up." She shoved at Root until she stood up and then pulled herself up after her. Her entire body ached from slamming into the ground twice now, but that was something she was only distantly aware of.

Across the street, the rubble from the house shifted.

"Let's go." Shaw grabbed Root's arm and pulled her across the ruined lawn of the houses behind them. She stepped over the melted remains of a soccer ball and kicked down the half-collapsed metal fence so she could get between the houses and into the backyards. Staying out on the street now was too dangerous. They had the warlock's attention and hopefully it would follow them away from the parts of the town that might still have survivors. She ducked through the ruined fence at the back of the yard and headed across the street and into another backyard. The maze of houses was seemingly endless here, and they all looked deserted.

"Hang on." There was a hose on the other side of the yard, water pouring from it and making muddy pools in the dry grass. Maybe the owner had tried to put out the fires before giving up and fleeing. Shaw grabbed it and stuck her face in the spray to clean some of the smoke and ash out of her eyes. The water was shockingly cold compared to the sweltering air and Shaw shivered all over and shook herself. She looked up to see if Root wanted to do the same, but Root was on the far side of the yard peering around the corner of the house back the way they'd come.

"See anything?" Shaw called as softly as she could. She dropped the hose back to the lawn.

"Nothing yet. Maybe it lost us." Root turned to look back at her. "We shouldn't go back, Shaw. I don't think we can count on the army or the bureau anymore. I think the bureau may have--"

The house they were behind had still been mostly structurally intact, so the first blow only blew out the windows and made the structure creak. The second, however, caused an explosion of wood and glass that rained through the air, and the third blow made the entire house burst and collapse at the same time. Shaw only managed one step forwards before there were pieces of wood and concrete flying everywhere. She watched as, almost in slow motion again, a piece of metal from the house walls twisted free in the blast and pinwheeled through the air towards Root. She'd spend the next week trying to remember the exact angle the metal hit Root at, if it had struck her in the neck or the shoulder, if she'd been falling towards it or away, if Shaw had really seen blood spray through the air or that had only been more ash or dirt.

A wooden beam slammed into Shaw and knocked her sideways. Burning pain flared in her left ankle as she struggled to sit up. And there, walking through the wreckage of the house, much closer than Shaw had ever wanted to see it, was the warlock. This close, Shaw could feel it, like a pressure weighing down on her from all sides and forcing the burning air from her lungs. The warlock didn't seem to have seen her yet and was walking towards the other end of the yard. Towards….

Shaw's arms strained as she lifted the heavy wooden beam off her ankle. She climbed to her feet, wincing when she put weight on her ankle, but not falling. She couldn't see Root with all the rubble in the way, but she had to assume she was still alive until she knew for sure.

A single blast from her shock wave glove smashed the remainder of the house and she didn't even have to look to know the warlock's attention was now on her. She stared into the empty, pale void of it.

"Come and get me, asshole." She turned and ran.

The chase through the burning houses that followed must have only lasted thirty minutes or so, she'd determined later, but in the thick of it, time lost all meaning. She lost track of how many yards she ran through, how many half-demolished houses she knocked down to slow the seemingly unstoppable path of the warlock. She didn't even remember where she was when she got hit in the face with burning embers or how she didn't get seriously burned from them (though that she later reasoned that was from the other artifact she had, the one that gave her the tiniest bit of protection from fire).

When she saw the line of heavily armed men in army fatigues and masks at the other end of the street in front of her, she debated for a hazy second on leading the warlock away from them, too (all those guns would just make them easier to kill), but three soldiers came up next to her from behind a house and waved at her to continue down the street.

"Keep heading that way, ma'am."

"I'm with the bureau. Listen, you need to get away from that thing. You can't shoot it."

"We've got this under control. Keep moving. There's medics waiting up ahead."

"You don't understand. That warlock is not going to be stopped by some guns. You need a new strategy." Not that she had one.

"Ma'am, please keep moving."

"I'm with the bureau, you idiot. I know more about surviving this shit than you army boys."

One of the soldiers shifted like he was thinking about raising his gun towards her, but then someone grabbed her arms from behind and pulled her away. She lashed out, kicking her assailant in the leg and rounded on them, only to get tackled by three other men. Something hit her hard on the temple and darkness swam before her eyes, but somehow she didn't black out.

"Wait, back off. She's with me. She's been in the thick of all that and just needs some air. I'll get her out of here."

Shaw relaxed as the soldiers backed away and looked up at Reese.

"I don't need some fucking air. They're all going to get themselves killed, Reese."

"I don't think we can convince them of that," he said, offering her a hand up. He didn't look as bad as she felt, but he had dried blood and ash on his face as well. "We need to talk to the people in charge, and you need to see the medics."

The reminder of her injuries jarred her memory. "Root. She's still back there. She got hurt." She turned back towards the way she'd come.

"We can go look for her after we regroup. Not this way."

Shaw reluctantly let him lead her further away. He was right: the soldiers wouldn't let them back through and the warlock was squarely between her and where she'd last seen Root. They needed to circle around.

The smoke hadn't been as heavy for about half a block, but it was still a shock to step out of it and suddenly see sunlight blazing down from the sky again. In the distance, towards the edge of town, Shaw could see ambulances and tents.

"Not yet," she said when Reese tried to lead her that way. "We go back for Root first."

"You're swaying on your feet. Tell me where you last saw her and I'll go find her, but you need to get yourself checked out."

Shaw hesitated, doing a self-assessment. She really _was_ swaying on her feet, and her injured ankle felt like it could give out at any moment. Would she even be able to make it back?

"I'm going back for her," she decided. "We don't leave our teammates behind." He'd told her that once when he'd gone back into the middle of an all-out slaughter to help her.

She could see by the look on his face that she'd won this round.

"Fine," he said, "but we should--"

Her earpiece erupted with static. She'd forgotten she still had the damn thing.

"Any ISA still on the ground, clear out now. We've got jets coming in hot. I repeat, clear out. We're about to firebomb this place."

"Change of plans," Reese said firmly. "We can't help her if we're dead."

She didn't stop Reese from steering her away this time and jogged after him as best she could down the street to the edge of town and up the hill towards the tents. The boom of the jets filled the air and she watched the three planes race above the smoky sky over the town. There was a moment of silence and then a line of fire spat up from the ground the jets had flown over, yellow and red flames rising up high. She watched in silence as Fairfield burned, only distantly registering that the area the jets had scorched hadn't been near where she'd last seen Root.

Her earpiece came to life again. "We're sending in a fresh team, but the report is that the warlock is down. Any ISA that made it out are to get to safety and then report to the north-east corner of town immediately."

Shaw took her earpiece out and chucked it into the grass. "Wanna steal a hummer?"

Reese threw his earpiece away as well. "I've got nothing better to do today."

She let Reese drive, maybe the first time that had ever happened. She hadn't been willing to submit to the medics fussing over her, but she'd managed to walk off with some basic supplies. As they drove through the burning town, she did her best to clean herself up. Half the injuries she didn't remember getting at all.

"Your face is a little red," Reese told her as he navigated around a blackened and gutted car in the middle of the road. "You get burned?"

"Yeah, maybe." Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, all her injuries were starting to hurt at once. "Take a left up ahead."

The destroyed school helped her pinpoint the general location of the house that had fallen on her and Root, but the area around it was already swarming with other hummers and suvs and dozens of army soldiers. They parked a block away and approached on foot. In the midst of the mess she recognized a familiar face.

"Hersh!"

Two soldiers tried to block her from going further, but Hersh detached himself from the crowd and waved them off. "Shaw. Reese. I didn't know you were sent to Fairfield." She thought he sounded confused, but that could have been the growing exhaustion.

"We drew the short straw for boring duty." Shaw tried to grin but her whole face hurt. "We need to get through here. Left someone back there."

"There's no one alive out there anymore. You should report back to the command center we set up outside town."

"I'm checking anyway."

Hersh scowled but then shook his head. "Make it fast. The whole town is going to get blocked off to contain the fires."

They started to head through the makeshift encampment when Shaw paused. Two men were carrying a stretcher between them with a human body on it, charred except for one leg which looked completely untouched. Black ink covered the leg in a spiderweb of patterns.

"That thing was human," she said quietly. She'd known that from the briefings but there had been nothing even remotely human about the thing that had been trying to kill her out there.

"We need to keep moving," Reese reminded her.

They had to walk the rest of the way and Shaw was limping heavily by the time they made it to the house. The ruined house looked the same as when she'd left it, but there was no sign of anyone, alive or dead, in the area. The place where she'd last seen Root had a lot of debris on it still, but not enough to hide a body, and the ground was too burnt to see if there was blood.

Reese didn't argue when she suggested they do a sweep of the blocks around the area, but both of them returned with no updates. If Root had gotten away, she hadn't left a trail.

"She must have made it out," Shaw said. "If she was still alive she would have had a clear shot to safety once the warlock followed me." But that scenario didn't quite make sense. If Root had been able to move, she would have tried to catch up with her, of that Shaw had no doubt.

Reese didn't look hopeful. "I'll check among the survivors, but you have got to let the medics help you now."

"Yeah, alright."

She passed out on the drive back and woke up hours later in a local hospital with Reese dozing in a chair nearby, covered in bandages of his own. Her entire body felt like hell now: face raw and stiff, ankle throbbing, lungs sore, cuts all over her still stinging. There was a gash on her arm she couldn't remember getting that had stitches in it when she pulled back the bandaging to inspect it.

It could have been much, much worse.

She reached out and shook Reese's arm until he woke up.

"What happened?"

He blinked, groggy. "The whole town is gone. There's a lot of survivors, but maybe more dead. The warlock is completely gone for sure, but there's still no indication of how it showed up in the first place or why it came here."

"Did you find Root?"

He shook his head. "Not in the survivors and not in any of the dead whose bodies were recognizable."

Shaw nodded. "Can't see her staying demurely with the survivors."

She went and checked again on her own later when Reese fell back asleep, but there was no Root anywhere to be found. The rows of burnt bodies stretched across the fields were unrecognizable and she didn't bother to try.

When she got back to the hospital (a temporary one that had been set up in one of the few remaining buildings on the edge of town) she saw bureau agents and troops swarming all over. Most she didn't recognize, but what in the hell was Denton Weeks, the head of Research and Development doing here of all places? This was a military mission, not something for r&d to stick their noses into.

She tried to avoid him, but she wasn't moving too fast on her injuries and he intercepted her.

"Agent Shaw. I heard you did good work out there today. When you're feeling better, there's a lot we need to discuss with you. We'll need to do a full debriefing of course. You may have valuable information about the incident here today."

"Incident." She looked back at the ruined town with smoke rising from it. "This was a hell of a lot more than an incident."

"Yes, of course. It was massively impressive. Terrible, but still the scope of the destruction...can't help but be impressed by that, eh?"

Shaw wondered what all the agents in the area would do if she punched Weeks in the face.

"Well, I'm looking forwards to your report, Agent Shaw. Get some rest."

"With all due respect, _sir_ , I'll be making my report to my superiors. Not to you." She turned away so she wouldn't have to hear his response and limped back towards the hospital.


	3. Epilogue

"Penny for your thoughts."

Shaw looked down at Root. Her eyes looked clear now and her face was no longer twisted with pain. The tattoo on her back stretched across the scar, complete again.

"You didn't know about what the bureau planned in Fairfield when you showed up there, right?"

Root frowned. "Of course not. I would have warned you."

Shaw nodded. "Since you told me about how the bureau let the warlock destroy Fairfield I keep wondering if they were involved right from the beginning. If maybe they helped create it."

Root crossed her arms under her chin to look up at Shaw. "Do you really want to know?"

Shaw just stared at her impatiently until she continued.

"The warlock in Fairfield was Denton Weeks' first attempt at having a pet warlock for the bureau to control. Fairfield was meant to be a...demonstration. Obviously it went horribly wrong almost immediately." Root rolled her eyes. "Weeks really is a great example of failing your way to the top. From what I could gather, the warlock was a former bureau agent who'd been fired for several behavioral issues and apparently when you give extreme destructive powers to a guy who's known to be violent and impulsive, he tends to destroy things in a violent and impulsive way. The first two smaller attacks I think he was still marginally listening to Weeks during, but Fairfield…."

Root turned her head to stare blankly across the loft, a slight frown wrinkling her forehead. Shaw wondered if Root ever had dreams about Fairfield the way she did, about the fire and the smoke that blotted out the sky and the empty figure stepping through the ruins.

"So Fairfield wasn't supposed to be destroyed?" she asked once it seemed clear Root wasn't going to add anything else unprompted.

"The plan was always for the warlock to go to Fairfield, but the amount of destruction he caused was definitely not supposed to happen. My guess is that the warlock had stopped listening to the bureau at that point and was either working with the demon he made a pact with or had gone mad with power."

Shaw thought about the way the school roof had been punched in. "Or maybe he just liked killing." He'd definitely gone for maximum destruction. "Why Fairfield? I'd expect them to have taken out some poor town no one would have given a fuck about and not a yuppie suburb."

Root chewed her lip before answering. "I was in the bureau's cells at the time, but I found out a lot later. Do you remember what happened nationally after Fairfield?"

"Country-wide panic. A lot of chaos. People hoarding supplies and building bunkers like total fucking idiots."

"And a lot of legislation passed through congress granting the bureau more power and funding to study and eliminate future warlocks. Most of the bureau wasn't involved in Weeks' little experiment, but he did get clearance for it from somewhere higher up. Whether it was him or a superior who made the call, they chose an idyllic, perfect little town on purpose, because they wanted everyone scared. They wanted everyone in the country who felt secure in their average lives to be afraid, and they rode that wave of terror to additional power. Weeks got his warlock research funding out of it, but the rest of the bureau profited as well."

"Was the ISA aware?"

"Not that I know of, but I can't say for sure."

At least that was something.

"I think Weeks might have sent me there. Control assigned all of us to the mission, but I don't think she decided where the teams went. Hersh seemed surprised I was in Fairfield, and if Control knew then Hersh would have, too. Probably." Weeks had always hated her. He must have thought it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of her. Maybe he'd even given the warlock instructions to kill her. It had definitely slaughtered all the other ISA agents there except for herself and Reese, though, to be fair, it had slaughtered everyone in its path.

"It seems likely he was involved in that decision, yes." Root shifted on the bed. "What made you think about Fairfield?"

Shaw shrugged.

"Are you mad at the bureau now after everything I've told you?" Root asked.

"Well, I'm definitely going to enjoy punching Weeks again, preferably right after I shoot him in the face, but the bureau…" It was more complicated than she cared to admit. "It's necessary as an organization. Humans are out of their league with unnaturals and artifacts barely give us a way to fight back. Weeks needs to go and anyone else involved in setting up Fairfield and this whole warlock initiative, but the bureau can't vanish completely."

Root stayed silent and Shaw got the feeling she disagreed. Which was fine. She could get why Root might want to wipe them out and salt the earth. Though a concerning thought occurred to her. "You're not planning to go full warlock on the bureau are you?"

Root gave a startled laugh. "No, I'm not going to go...full warlock on them, sweetie. I couldn't do what the Fairfield warlock did even if I wanted to. Not the fire part anyway. And She wouldn't let me."

"Good. I don't want to have to break you out of a bureau cell." She finally realized that Root still had a death grip on her hand and carefully freed herself.

Root smiled lazily up at her, not a hint of her pain from earlier obvious anymore. "Want that favor now, sweetie?"

"You were in extreme pain five minutes ago," Shaw pointed out.

"Once She finished fixing the tattoo She was free to help me with the pain," Root explained. "I'm a little tired, but otherwise…." She waggled her eyebrows at Shaw in a way that was probably meant to be sexy but was anything but.

"Maybe later." Thinking about Fairfield hadn't left her in the mood. "What did they tell you about Fairfield after they captured you? The bureau, I mean." She'd avoided asking Root about the time she'd spent as the bureau's prisoner, but her curiosity had finally gotten the better of her.

Root frowned but answered anyway. "Not a lot. I gathered that you'd survived when they threatened to kill you if I didn't cooperate."

"What'd you say to that?"

"If the warlock couldn't kill you then the bureau wouldn't stand a chance," Root said scornfully.

"Damn right."

"They gave up on that fairly quickly, and most of the things I found out about Fairfield before I escaped I got from the questions they asked and putting together clues for myself. And then I helped myself to a lot of their records on my way out."

"Weeks and his gang were never very good at figuring out that type of psychological pressure further than the blunt force threats," Shaw mused. "He doesn't get what makes people tick. Not on an individual basis."

"You're awfully focused on Fairfield today. Did something happen?"

"No." She didn't know how to express the fact she was...pleased that Root hadn't died back there in a way she was comfortable with. She thought Root probably knew anyway. It was annoying how Root always seemed to know stuff like that, but it was also easier. "I'm going to get a sandwich from the deli across the street. You want anything?"

"Surprise me."

Root would likely regret that shortly. She got up to put on more clothes to brave the cold.

"I guess this is yet another favor I owe you now," Root said as she watched her dress. "How tragic."

Shaw rolled her eyes. "I think I'm just going to stop counting."

It didn't occur to her until she was halfway down the stairs to the street that she didn't _want_ Root to owe her anything, not anything real anyway. She and Reese had saved each other's asses enough times that all concepts of owing each other had faded away. And now maybe she had that with Root, too, especially if Root's idea of returning a favor involved anything like Fairfield again. Sandwiches and sex though? She could still keep track of those.

When she got to the sidewalk, she breathed in the frigid air of the city and crammed her hands in her pockets. She'd been thinking about spending the rest of the day looking into some leads on the fae artifact, but maybe she'd put that off until tomorrow. Today she wanted a sandwich and to watch Root's look of shock and betrayal when she bit into the extremely spicy sandwich Shaw had in mind for her and then maybe some apology sex and a nap and then dinner and then more sex. It could be like a mini vacation for both of them.

She shook the last memories of Fairfield from her head and set off across the street to get lunch.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it!
> 
> I'm working on the sequel fic still. Might be a bit before it's done, but progress is happening.


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